July 17 - 20, 2025
ODC Theater
Savor the sweetness of summer with a taste of ODC/Dance. Experience world premieres from ODC Fellow KT Nelson and Staging Director Mia J. Chong, along with critically acclaimed, "especially thrilling," 10,000 Steps: A Dance About Its Own Making by Guest Choreographer Catherine Galasso.
This summer we celebrate our roots and our future with two World Premiere works. One by KT Nelson, whose extravagant movement and glorious performance helped define and inspire ODC/Dance for decades. And the second by Mia J. Chong, whose coast to coast artistic journey began at age 5 right here in our studios. These times call for courage--they ask us to both remember and boldly move ahead. KT and Mia promise to lead us on that path.
-Brenda Way
“brainy wit and flashes of profundity”
- San Francisco Chronicle
ODC is offering a group discount of 10% off orders of 6+ tickets. Use code ODC10 at checkout. For groups of 8+ use code SSGROUP8 for $15 tickets.
About the Work
- Nothing’s Going to Make Sense (World Premiere) Choreography by KT Nelson
Nothing’s Going to Make Sense reflects on KT Nelson’s experience of the sudden death of her husband, an irreversible event that shifted her sense of reality. The dance holds an emotional story, often out of order, marrying contradictions of loss and love, reality and fantasy, aloneness and togetherness.
KT NELSON (ODC Fellow) joined ODC/Dance in 1976 and partnered with Brenda Way in directing the ODC/Dance Company until 2020. KT choreographed the Company’s first full-length family ballet in 1986, The Velveteen Rabbit. The production has become a holiday tradition in the Bay Area engaging generations of dance goers.
KT has been awarded the Isadora Duncan Dance Award four times: in 1987 for Outstanding Performance, in 1996 and 2012 for Outstanding Choreography, and in 2001 for Sustained Achievement. Her collaborators have included Bobby McFerrin, Geoff Hoyle, Amy Seiwert, Shinichi Iova-Koga, Kate Weare, Zap Mama, and Joan Jeanrenaud. Her work RingRounRozi, in collaboration with French-Canadian composer Linda Bouchard, was selected to be performed at the Tanzmesse International Dance Festival. boulders and bones, in collaboration with Brenda Way, was part of BAM’s Next Wave Festival. Her One Long Breath collaboration with Na Hoon Park was selected for the MODAFE festival in Seoul, Korea. Path of Miracles, created in collaboration with the Volti Vocal Ensemble, is her third evening-length work and has toured across the country.
In 1996, Nelson founded the ODC Dance Jam (ages 6-13). As ODC’s first director of Educational Outreach, Nelson did extensive community work including partnerships with the Kohler Arts Center, University of Florida at Gainesville, Everett Middle School, San Francisco Mime Troupe, San Francisco’s Writers Union, Thunder Road Drug Rehabilitation and more. From 2004 to 2007, she ran the dance department for the summer program Center for Creative Youth at Wesleyan University. She has mentored with the Margaret Jenkin’s Chime Project, co-founded RoundAntennae and continues to mentor emerging artists in the Bay Area and abroad.
- 10,000 Steps: A Dance About Its Own Making Choreography by Catherine Galasso
Catherine Galasso’s 10,000 Steps: A Dance About Its Own Making (World Premiere) dissects the notion of “pedestrian” movement and the liminal, theatrical space between locomotion and dance through exactly 10,000 deliberate steps. Both joyful and self-reflective, 10,000 Steps: A Dance About Its Own Making reveals nuanced complexities within an intricate and exuberant structure.
Catherine Galasso is an independent choreographer and director based in Brooklyn, NY. Her interdisciplinary dance works have been presented by venues in the US such as Danspace Project, La MaMa, SFMoMA, Guild Hall, the Kohler Arts Center, and internationally at Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, France; Skena UP in Pristina, Kosovo; and Zona D Studio in Bucharest, Romania. In addition, she creates original performance works for alternative spaces such as underground bank vaults, apple orchards, decaying 4-story homes, and grand
marble staircases.Galasso’s work has been supported by the New York State Council on the Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center, Headlands Center, Kaatsbaan and ODC Theater, among others. Her collaboration with choreographer Andy de Groat (GET DANCING) was nominated for a New York “Bessie” and her Alone Together (ODC Theater Commission, 2018) was awarded a San Francisco “Izzie.” Galasso’s Bring On The Lumière! (ODC, 2011) about cinema pioneers the Lumière Brothers received a dedicated chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Screendance Studies.
Galasso also works as a choreographer for theater & opera, and is currently creating dances for a new production of Meyerbeer’s Le Prophete (dir. Christian Räth) premiering this summer at Bard SummerScape 2024. She regularly assists choreographer Annie-B Parson, most recently on Daniel Fish’s production of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide at Opera de Lyon (2022). Galasso holds a European Baccalaureate in Painting from the Istituto Statale d’Arte in Venice, Italy, and a BA in Film from Cornell University. She is the daughter of composer Michael Galasso
- World Premiere Choreography by Mia J. Chong
MIA J. CHONG (Staging Director) was born and raised in San Francisco, where she began her dance training at the ODC School at age 5. Mia danced with Robert Moses’ Kin and Dance Theatre of San Francisco before joining ODC/Dance, where she performed for six seasons and received a Princess Grace Award and Chris Hellman Dance Honor for her work as a company dancer. She returned to the company as Staging Director in 2024, where she has collaborated with Brenda Way and KT Nelson on numerous restagings and reimaginations of ODC/Dance repertory and assisted guest choreographer Sidra Bell in creating new work.
Mia is also the founding Artistic Director of EIGHT/MOVES, a contemporary dance company
dedicated to creating unity through movement and utilizing dance to generate cultural and social
change. Through EIGHT/MOVES, she has collaborated with Rena Butler, Keerati Jinakunwiphat, KT Nelson, RJ Muna, and Sidney Chen. Mia’s choreography has been presented by Post:ballet, FACT/SF, RAWdance, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, UC Berkeley, Gonzaga University, BODYSONNET, and more. Her choreography for film has been selected and screened by more than ten festivals around the world, reaching audiences in South Korea, England, Turkey, and Italy. Mia has also received a Jacob’s Pillow Hicks Choreography Fellowship, Aninstantia Grant, Zellerbach Community Arts Grant, Alonzo King LINES Ballet Homer Avila Award, and Metro Film and Arts Foundation Grant, among other honors. She earned a BA in Social Sciences with a concentration in Organizational Behavior and Change from New York University and an MS in Arts Administration and Cultural Entrepreneurship from Northeastern University. Mia is grateful for the constant support from Brenda, KT, Kimi, and the countless other mentors she’s found through the ODC community throughout her journey, and she is excited to premiere her first work on ODC/Dance at Summer Sampler this July.
Pre-Show Q&A with the ODC/Dance Artistic Team
Sunday July 20, 2025
Join us for an intimate pre-show Q&A with the ODC/Dance Artistic Team at 4:00PM in the ODC Theater Lobby. Gain intimate insights into the inner workings of ODC/Dance, as well as the work you are about to see. Free for audiences with tickets to Sunday's 5:00PM performance.
About ODC/Dance
Founded in 1971 by Artistic Director Brenda Way, ODC/Dance was one of the first American companies to incorporate a post-modern sensibility (an appreciation for pedestrian movement) into a virtuosic contemporary dance technique and to commit major resources to interdisciplinary collaboration and musical commissions for the repertory.
Arts Access Tickets
ODC offers a limited number of free and/or lower-cost Art Access tickets to every ODC presented performance. For most performances in B. Way Theater, twenty tickets are allocated to the Arts Access tiers. These additionally subsidized tickets, available on a first-come, first-serve basis, are reserved for those for whom price is a barrier. Please contact boxoffice@odc.dance if you or your organization is interested in underwriting the cost of additional Arts Access tickets.